Chapter 23
We walked for three days with only minor skirmishes—twice from creatures crawling out of Rifts, and one with another giant that we hid from. But otherwise, it was as quiet a walk as I could have hoped for.
Rana slowly woke up, her eyes bright and her many questions…so many questions.
“Why do I think I saw a great purple snake eat Mallory?”
“Did we really piss off an elemental that wanted Veyyr to make babies?”
“I remember flying, did I fly or did I fall?”
“Did I meet a pretty witch?”
Harrison finally snapped and answered them all in quick succession. “Yes. Yes. Falling. Yes.”
“Oh wow, that’s some crazy stuff!” She grinned over at me. “But how did you get the snake to spit you out? Did you taste bad?”
Lucky choked and barked a laugh. “Oh, gods above, don’t ruin what fantasies I have left, kid.”
We sat around a small fire, our backs to a stone slab with names engraved all over it…fallen soldiers by the looks of it. “I pointed out to the snake that I had a very sharp blade with me, and while I couldn’t cut through his scales, I could in fact cut his head off from the inside.”
“Except for the scales,” Lucky said.
I shrugged. “Still would hurt a hell of a lot to a snake who’s probably never taken an injury.” I touched my hand to the dagger I’d pulled from Python’s mouth. Wondering if his blood was as powerful as Stheno’s. I wished I could ask her.
“What is it?” Veyyr didn’t even look up from the fire. Digging hard and using the bond as I had only increased our sensitivity to one another’s thoughts.
“Thinking about Stheno. I wish she were here.”
His head snapped up. “Are you insane?”
I shrugged, not really sure I could explain why a monster like Stheno was a strange sort of comfort to me.
Maybe because sometimes I wondered if I was a monster.
Or maybe, just maybe it felt like a friendship based on brutal honesty.
Stheno would never lie to me, even if the truth hurt.
And I would do the same for her. I looked up to see Veyyr just staring at me, waiting for an answer that I doubted he’d understand.
Harrison and Lucky shared a look and Lucky mouthed. No idea who Stheno is.
“I liked her. She has…spice.” I laughed and tossed a stick into the fire.
Beside me, Sorrow picked up a twig, hopped over and flicked it into the fire.
Rana made gimme hands at him, but he ignored her and hopped into my lap, settling in with a fluff of his feathers, his head turned so his beak lay along the middle of my chest.
Veyyr muttered something under his breath about not understanding women. Lucky clapped him on the back. “Dude, you and every other fucking critter that has a set of balls.”
Rana giggled and slapped her hands over her mouth. “He said balls.”
She was still getting used to Lucky’s more colorful use of language. To be fair, none of us were about keeping a lid on it. She was one of us now, and that meant she was treated in some ways like an adult. Cursing and all.
Sorrow fluffed up some more and settled in deeper on me, tucking his talons up tight. “Can you get any closer?” I used one finger to scratch him at the base of his hidden ear. He leaned into it with his eyes fluttering closed.
“That bird sure loves you,” Harrison said. “You never, ever see more than one sorrowbird at a time, you know that? Someone…” he shot a glance at Veyyr and then away, “told me once that it was because too much sorrow would kill anyone.”
Whoever it was who’d given him the advice wasn’t wrong. Too much sorrow would paralyze you, send you into a place you couldn’t crawl out of, and that might kill you, but not the sorrow itself.
I smiled and stroked along Sorrow’s head, running my hand over the slick feathers of his head and neck, finding the nub of his tiny horn that I often forgot was there. “One is enough for me. He’s a good one though, and I wouldn’t trade him.”
Sorrow didn’t close his eyes as he had been doing, nor did he go to sleep like he normally did in this position, but instead he grabbed at my hand the one with the ring.
Nipping at the metal.
Tapping it.
Then lifting his eyes to mine. It was easy to forget about the ring, about finding my past when so much was dependant on the present. It was in a very literal sense, non-existent. Maybe that was for the best, letting go of a past that I couldn’t remember anyway.
I glanced at Veyyr who leaned back, dozing, firelight flicking across his sharp features. Claiming him at the bridge had been another turning point. Neither of us had spoken about it, and I let the others come to the conclusion that it had been bravado and nothing more.
But between us, the bond had shifted, tightened further without any additional words or magic.
Sorrow tapped the ring again.
I rolled the ring and stared down at him, wondering at what he was trying to tell me. He had not been this insistent before. “What? I know I need to figure it out, but it’s the past, Sorrow. And let’s be real, buddy, I haven’t had time.”
It felt like a gong sounded in my chest, rattling my rib bones. No one else heard it since there was no response from Lucky or Harrison who sat closest to me.
Veyyr sat up, the bond between us giving him a front row seat of what was going on inside of me. “What was that?”
I shook my head and opened my mouth to answer, my voice disappearing as words that were not a voice, but more like images that translated into words rocked through me.
Time is something neither of us has. You must hurry, my friend. I…need you to find me. I need you to save me.
The crackle of the fire faded, the world seemed to slow, even the bond to Veyyr felt hollow next to the emotions that followed the images, love, hope, fear, grief, they swelled and tangled together deep in me, fighting to get to the surface the same way my connection to the wolves had.
I couldn’t close my eyes staring into Sorrow’s eyes, and if the others were speaking to me, I couldn’t hear them.
The fire, my friends, the world fell away, and I stared at a place and a moment I didn’t remember, yet it was mine.
It was a memory that had been pieced together, shaky and like a poor series of snap shots.
It was the field that I’d seen in Sorrow’s eyes before, only more this time.
Hoofbeats pounded, reverberating in the marrow of my bones, wind rushed through my hair, and my body moved in perfect tandem with the veilrunner beneath me. Her coat was made of midnight, a rainbow of colors flecking through the darkness, and on her head was a two-foot-long horn of solid gold.
She raced across a field with me, purple flowers flying as we scattered them—not a ride filled with joy, or freedom.
We ran for our lives.
I looked over my shoulder at the horde of hollow ones that had our scent.
They wanted her, a unicorn made of darkness for their master the Necro King.
They wanted my twin flame, the one soul who knew me inside and out, the one soul who loved me, and who fought for me. The one who was a sister in every way that mattered.
And they wanted to put her out, to snuff the light she carried and claim the dark for their own.
I was thrown from her back, hit the ground, rolled and leapt to my feet.
She was gone. The horde was gone.
The smell of heart blood lingered. A scream built on my lips—
The scene didn’t fade, it just…shattered…
and I came out of the trance screaming, tears spilling down my cheeks as I lurched forward blind to the world, seeing only the purple flowers, the grassy field and the blood that splattered across it all.
Sorrow flew from me, screeching, his voice sounding like the shrill cry of a veilrunner.
Someone shouted, then touched me and it took all the control in me not to start swinging fists and blades.
“Don’t touch me right now.” I bent at the waist and let the rage and horror wash over and over, waves of pain and anger that I didn’t fully understand—not yet. I held my breath, fighting to not hurt my friends. I put space between myself and them all.
“Tracker. A new memory?” Veyyr’s voice brought me back to the present, grounding me. He crouched not far from me, one hand held out to me. An offer if I wanted it to hang onto him through this.
But I couldn’t take his hand. Not yet.
“Something like that. Like a memory that I didn’t understand when it happened, but I understood it this time.
Pieces of memories to show me something that I had to see.
” My hands shook and I slowly lowered myself to my knees and then further until my forehead was pressed into the dirt.
Horror, grief, the pain of something that I couldn’t replace, lost forever.
A moan slid out of me, the urge to end it all and follow her past the Veil gutting me.
“Do not.” Veyyr was at my side, but he didn’t touch me. “Do not go there, Mallory.”
I tasted dirt as I worked to get the words, to get air. “I…failed her. The bleeders took her. She’s dead.”
There had been so much blood. The scent had been too strong, and from a heart pumping out its last desperate beats.
Whispers around me, but it was Sorrow who dared to come close first. He bunted me with the little nub of a horn. Sorrow was solid black, but with rainbows of color within the darkness. He carried a horn on his head and was guiding me even now.
Just like she had. Just like my veilrunner.
I didn’t know her name, but I knew she was my other half. She was the hollow place I’d felt when I’d woken up in the Rift. The sense of something missing. That hollowness was a place that I’d filled for a time with new friends, a new quest. Veyyr.
Distractions.
“Not gone.” Sorrow clucked softly. “Not gone. Still time.”
There was still time…I lifted my head. “To save her? How…how could she have survived that?”
Sorrow hopped and fluffed his wings, nodding, clacking his beak. “Time. Smart girl.”
I pushed to a sitting position. Lucky, Harrison, and Rana sat on the far side, Rana’s face coated in tears, whether because she was afraid or because she understood what I’d said too well. To fail someone, and more to fail someone you loved was a pain that burrowed deep and was not easily healed.
And she’d lost her parents not all that long ago.
Harrison stood up. “Mal, if you have to find someone, we could help.”
A grunt from Lucky. “Soon as we get this done, kid. Then yeah, we could help you.”
Rana smiled. “I don’t know what help I am, but I would help too, Mallory.”
Veyyr didn’t offer, and I knew why. He thought he would be dead. He shook his head. “I cannot pretend that I would help you find your mother.”
“It’s not my mother.” Though I found it interesting that my mother was an issue for him.
And I let that interest keep me from focussing too much on the loss of my other half.
“It’s…I don’t know her name, she’s more like my sister.
My best friend who is closer to me than blood.
” Maybe I should have told them it was a veilrunner. Maybe that would have changed things.
“Can you Track her?” Harrison asked.
Sorrow grabbed another stick and threw it into the fire, whatever insight and depth he had, gone until he felt I needed it again. I reached for my Tracking, thinking about the black coat, the gold horn…and got nothing.
“No. I don’t understand why, I could track Dakota. Rana. Sorrow.”
Veyyr nodded. “From what I understand about Tracking, you need a name. A name and an image. You got the image, but no name I’m guessing?”
“No name. I can’t remember it.” I turned to Sorrow. “Her name, Sorrow, what is it?”
He fucking shrugged his feathery shoulders. “Don’t know.”
Veyyr sighed. “We will reach the eastern shore tomorrow. We’re almost done, as Lucky said.” That held more weight for me than for the others, almost done because he thought he’d be dead. He was almost done.
“Well,” Harrison grimaced. “Not entirely.”
Veyyr held up both hands in mock surrender. “A week, at best. Maybe less, and you’ll be free, Tracker, to go where you wish.”
“But we’ll go with her,” Harrison insisted. “Us and…we’ll help. It’s the least we can do, right Veyyr?”
Veyyr stared into the fire. “When the time comes, you all can make that decision, to follow the Tracker into danger or not. Because where she goes, trouble will follow.”
Again, he spoke as if he wouldn’t be there. He truly believed he wasn’t going to make it past this next ingredient we were to collect.
Lucky sniggered. “Didn’t know your middle name before today, boss man.” And the big ogre winked at Veyyr. Harrison looked from his brother to Lucky and back.
“You don’t have a middle name.”
Lucky threw back his head and laughed so loudly, I thought he might let out a fart.
And while my heart ached for my lost sister…I was at least with those I could trust.
Rana crept around the fire. “Can I hug you now?”
I held out my arm closest to her, and she ran and threw herself at me. I held her tight. “I’m sorry if I scared you.”
“I felt your pain, it came all the way across the fire to me, as if I were touching you,” she said. “It was like mine, losing a piece of your soul.”
I held her a little tighter, closing my eyes and doing all I could to control my emotions. “I am so sorry, Rana. No one should feel pain like that, certainly not someone so young.”
She didn’t let go of me. “But it means that you had something most don’t. A love and soul bond like no other. That’s what…that’s what I was told.”
Her words were far too grown up for a little girl and yet that didn’t make them any less true. “You are absolutely right.” And she was, and I knew that I was lucky beyond the stars to have time with a soul like my veilrunner’s. I just wished I could remember more than the pain of losing her.